


In Which They Do Not Kiss

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Past Abuse, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-18 13:03:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16119047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: They do not kiss.Fenris corrects himself and draws a heavy line through those words. If his thoughts are a manuscript, this is the corrected version: they do not kiss in public, and only rarely in private.





	In Which They Do Not Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Razzaroo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/gifts).



> Thank you [LadyNorbert](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladynorbert) for reading through and generally reassuring me on the fic. <3

They do not kiss.

Fenris corrects himself and draws a heavy line through those words. If his thoughts are a manuscript, this is the corrected version: they do not kiss in public, and only rarely in private.

Fenris knows this must seem odd to others, but he is comfortable as an oddity. It is not shame that hides them, but tenderness.

Danarius had prized Fenris, flaunting him at every opportunity. Fenris knew himself as handsome, his tattoos and body on display for his master’s pleasure, but that had been a sour joy. A sword does not admire its craftsmanship, nor a vase its beauty.

Sebastian treasures Fenris, treats him as something precious and secret. His tenderness is worn over the heart and under the vest. Fenris knows himself as a fool, stumbling over letters that any child could read, but he sits by Sebastian’s side, their thighs touching, the Book of Shartan falling open across their laps. Sunlight filters through the open window, tinting the pages gold and honey, glinting off Sebastian’s stubble as Fenris steals a sideways glance to study him.

Their first lessons had been slow and almost stillborn. Fenris had needed time to decide whether to learn, whether to take Sebastian’s offer seriously, and then there was the matter of deciding the time and place for their sessions. Fenris had no mind to clean Danarius’ mansion, this mausoleum of ruin. There was a pleasure in destruction, in the breaking of glass and smashing of plates, in allowing the shards to accumulate in dust-shrouded piles. He quietly cheered the spiders that wove vast fogs of cobwebs in every corner, and took satisfaction in leaving crumbs and plates scattered at will. Every petty act of vandalism was one small blow to Danarius’ holdings, one small spit on the man’s grave.

He had thought Sebastian to be dismayed at this wanton ruin, but the man had smiled, just faintly, and declared it a monument to asceticism.

“There is no meaning to a vow of poverty if one is already impoverished,” Fenris said drily.

Sebastian chuckled, rich and velvety. His voice rolls across the tongue like red wine. “You could have sold the furnishings, had you the mind to. Perhaps the Maker sees a greater purpose in your actions.”

Fenris snorted, but allowed Sebastian to teach him.

Sebastian is a patient tutor, never chiding, never rushing to finish Fenris’ sentences for him. The letters are the fundamental thing, and Fenris learns the shape of them, the taste of them. There is something shiver-cool and sweet in learning the shape of ‘water,’ or the way that ‘fire’ leaps from the page. ‘Love’ is a gentle word, the rounded vowels of it, and Fenris learns how these words fit together into sentences, paragraphs, long passages of text that twine together in the ways their bodies cannot, for Sebastian holds true to his vows. Fenris cannot help but admire a man who keeps his oaths, and loves him all the more for it.

Sebastian may waver in his decisions, his path uncertain, but his faith is the brick and mortar of him. Whether this is conviction or blindness, Fenris cannot say, but Sebastian is an unread book. Fenris cannot yet decipher him, but there is pleasure in the seeking. 

Even if Fenris never finds answers, at least he has company along the way.


End file.
